


The Heart's Gold Thread

by Dolorosa



Category: Seasons of Glass and Iron - Amal El-Mohtar
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 15:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12962064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: After leaving the glass hill, Tabitha and Amira find themselves walking strange paths and wandering into other people's stories.





	The Heart's Gold Thread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pendrecarc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/gifts).



After leaving their eyrie on the glass hill, Amira and Tabitha had initially travelled without purpose. The novelty of movement, of boundless space, of the curve of the horizon and the path unfolding before them had been enough, and they were content to simply put one foot in front of the other and go wherever the road led them. They crossed a desert, hopping from oasis to half-remembered oasis — places Tabitha had paused on her own weary journey, before she'd reached Amira. They slept out in the open, sharing Tabitha's tattered cloak for warmth, under the blazing sweep of the stars, enclosed in each other's arms. And by the time they'd reached the ocean, and paid for passage across with the gold earrings from Amira's ears, they knew they would be content to walk forever, towards whatever adventures they might encounter. They would know when they felt ready to stop. And so they carried on.

But the boundaries between time and tales are thin in places, and so Amira and Tabitha found that they had wandered into someone else's story.

*

The first clue was that the land had changed completely. Whereas before they had been travelling along a smooth, straight road, broad and spacious beneath the sunshine, they were now on a twisting, narrow, muddy track that wound its way around bogs and hills. The vegetation surrounding their former road had been fragrant fruit trees — oranges, apricots and dates, ripe and ready for them to feast on whenever they paused to rest. Now they stood in a misty, blasted landscape, dotted here and there with nettle and gorse. They had left the sunlight far behind, and shivered in their thin clothes beneath a darkening sky which seem to hang much lower in the air than the arching, bright blue vault under which they'd been walking for the past few days.

'Amira,' said Tabitha, 'someone is coming towards us.'

The two women drew together, and Tabitha — more familiar with the dangers posed by a stranger encountered on the road — took Amira's hand. Amira could feel the tension in her companion's body, as they watched the figure approach, moving swiftly towards them in the twilight. As the figure drew closer, they realised two things: it was another woman, and although it was damp and muddy, her footsteps left no impression in the ground across which she travelled.

The woman spoke, and her voice reverberated in strange and discomforting ways.

'What are you doing out in the open?' she asked, tossing her mane of fiery red hair, which seemed to crackle and hiss with the promise of lightning. 'You must both be new — I haven't seen either of you before — but you must know that you'll draw his attention if you wander around outside on your own! There are subtler, easier ways to escape — come with me!'

Tabitha and Amira looked at each other, feeling dubious at the prospect of following this strange woman anywhere, but they trusted one another, and felt certain in their ability to escape any danger, and so they allowed themselves to be led across the bogs, mud caking their silken shoes and bare legs. They walked slowly and carefully and in silence — both Tabitha and Amira privately felt that the woman had slowed her movements and chosen safer paths for their sake — until they reached one of the green hills that emerged, like a slumbering giant, from the bog. The path snaked upwards, and they followed it to the top of the hill, which was dotted with worn grey stones and patches of heather. A second woman emerged from between the stones.

'Fúamnach!' this new woman exclaimed, pushing past Amira and Tabitha to embrace the woman who had led them up the hill.

There was fear in her eyes as she looked wildly around in all directions. 'Were you followed? And who are these people? Did Midir take them too?'

Amira decided enough was enough.

'I'm Amira, and my companion is Tabitha. We know nothing of any Midir. Who are you both, and what land is this? We seem to have wandered from our own path and onto another.'

The red-haired woman — Fúamnach — answered.

'I'm sorry to have driven you here, but in the urgency of the situation I mistook you for women, brought to this place, like Étaín here, by my husband Midir. He's the ruler of this land, and he has a tendency to — shall we say, _acquire_ people and bring them here without a care for whether they desire to be here or not.'

Étaín spoke up. 'At first it was an adventure. I was walking the ramparts of my father's fort, feeling confined and restless and curious for things beyond the fort's round walls. And there was Midir, striding across the plain, tall and proud and dangerous, with storms in his eyes, prepared to swallow any insults my father threw at him in order to take me away. He used his supernatural powers to clear plains and divert rivers, and paid my father my weight in silver and gold, and he did it with a mocking smile. And I went away with him laughing, knowing that once we were gone the plains and rivers would revert back to their former state, and the silver and gold would melt away, leaving my father holding a pile of twigs and leaves. And when I first came to this place, it seemed a land of joy and wonders.'

'It always seems that way at first,' said Fúamnach, and there was a terrible, knowing sadness in her eyes.

'At first it was one marvel after another: feasting and music and storytelling whenever we wanted, and freedom to roam across the vast regions controlled by Midir. And everything was strange and wild and beautiful, and nobody aged, and there were no consequences to your choices. I felt alive with possibility for the first time,' said Étaín.

'But eventually,' said Fúamnach, picking up the thread, 'you came to realise that you had exchanged one set of walls for another. The feasts and dancing and music are all at Midir's urging, and only happen when he wills it. The magic is his, the powers are his, for the most part, and the strange wildness happens according to his capricious whim. You may not age or suffer, but you can never leave.'

Amira and Tabitha were struck by Étaín's almost excessive beauty. Fúamnach was beautiful, but it was a blazing, supernatural beauty that both drew the eye and confused it. Étaín's beauty was of another type — the kind they recognised. It was a weight, a burden, a beauty that was misinterpreted and inspired a kind of avaricious acquisitiveness that got excused as devotion in stories.

'Midir oscillates between extreme focus and forgetful fickleness. There are people here who have been in this otherworld for centuries, and Midir can't remember their names, or why he brought them here. And yet if any of us try to leave, he'll remember us soon enough, and put all his considerable powers to work to punish us for our audacity in attempting to move out of his orbit,' said Étaín.

'That's outrageous!' said Amira. Having only recently escaped the confines that had been imposed on her, the injustice of another woman being trapped and unable to walk her own path made her blaze with anger.

'Indeed it is,' said Fúamnach, 'which is why I am trying to do something about it. I have powers of my own — not enough to challenge Midir directly, as he would never have tolerated a wife whose powers offered a serious threat, but enough to hide in plain sight and resist him in small ways, in the spaces he cannot see.'

'You said you're his wife?' asked Tabitha. 'If this is a land where people do not age, how long have you been here?'

She did not ask, _why don't you leave?_ She would never ask that of another woman, knowing what she knew, carrying what she carried.

'Time moves differently when you are a being as I am,' said Fúamnach, 'but suffice it to say I have been here long enough to see rivers rise and fall, hills levelled into plains, and the stones on which we're resting become smooth and worn.'

Étaín was looking about warily, her eyes sweeping across the bogs and the path, fearful that they had been pursued.

'Do you have all you need?' she asked Fúamnach. 'I don't like to hurry you, but I'm worried that any delay makes it more likely that we'll be discovered.'

'I was ready before we even climbed this hill,' said Fúamnach. 'But I want to make sure that you understand the limits of what I can do for you. I can give you space and time, but you will not evade pursuit forever. I can offer you a pause, no more.'

'I understand,' said Étaín. 'It is enough.'

She embraced Fúamnach, and her eyes were bright with tears that glittered in the starlight. Her voice was heavy with emotion.

'Thank you, friend,' she said to Fúamnach. 'I'll not forget this. And I'll wait for you.'

Fúamnach clasped Étaín's hands, and kissed her closed eyes, and pulled her into a final embrace. The air around them shifted and changed, seeming to shimmer and spark. And suddenly, Fúamnach was no longer holding a woman, but instead a torrent of water, which poured over her arms and flowed through her fingers, pooling between the stones briefly before rushing down the hill, cold and dark and furious.

'She is being drawn towards Midir,' said Fúamnach. 'I can't prevent it. I can follow the course of the water, and transform her again, and conjure up a storm to blow her away, and push her forward in time, but eventually he will find her.' 

Lightning seemed to crackle between her fingers, and she gestured westward in the darkness. Within moments, Tabitha and Amira could her the distant sound of thunder.

'There,' said Fúamnach. 'I've pushed her away, right out of this place. But I've only given her respite for so long, and I could not change her back to her original form. Midir will find her again, and my only option will be to push her forward in time, to cause her to be reborn. I wish I could do more.'

The storm did not touch the trio on the hill, and Tabitha and Amira marvelled at the coiled power that could conjure such weather at will.

'You two are different,' said Fúamnach. 'You came here on your own. Midir hasn't touched you, and so I can help you get away from this place, without pursuit, and it will be as if you've never travelled its paths. But my power ends at the sea shore. I cannot help you cross oceans, but I can help you travel forward in time, if you feel that would help ensure your safety.'

Tabitha and Amira looked at each other briefly, and same the same resolution in each other's eyes.

'If that is the only way to get out of here, then that is what we'll do,' said Amira.

'We trust you,' said Tabitha. 'Do whatever you need to do.'

Before the pair had met each other, they might have been daunted by the prospect of leaving their own time, but now the only home they had was in each other, and their only path the one they walked together. They moved towards Fúamnach, ready for her to transport them, as she had transported Étaín.

'They'll say it was because I was jealous,' said Fúamnach, and her voice was heavy with grief and bitterness. 'They'll say I transformed her in a fit of jealous fury, and when I save her again, they'll say I pursued her out of envy. Kings and warlords will try to marry her, and will claim her beauty caused them to lose all reason, and they'll make her a prize in _fidchell_ games, and bring her with them on circuits around the land, like some kind of lucky charm. And when people tell her story, they'll turn her into a symbol of sovereignty, of the fickle favour of the land for a king's rule, never wondering what she dreamt and thought and wished for. That will be how they contain her. But I know that one day — it might be tomorrow, it might be in seven years, or a thousand years, but it will happen — she will step off the path, off the page, out from among the bard's harp strings in which others have placed her, and into her own story. And then I will find her again.'

There was nothing that Amira or Tabitha could say. Their words dried up in the face of the truth Fúamnach was telling, but they clasped her hands briefly, and Amira unpinned the brooch she had been wearing, and pressed it into Fúamnach's palm.

'Use that to find _us_ again,' she said.

Fúamnach nodded tightly, and touched her hands to the other women's foreheads, and the air seemed to rush and whirl around them, and light blazed and burned behind their eyes, and before any time appeared to have passed at all they had been transported to a different hill, under a different sky, in a different era. Amira took Tabitha's hand, and they descended, together.

*

They found themselves in a forest, dense with alder, ash and oak trees, tangled with ivy, lit with dappled light. They could hear birdsong, and the far-off rush of flowing water, and the soft whisper of the wind in the treetops. There were no obvious tracks or paths, so the two women took each other's hands, and began walking forwards, picking their way carefully through the undergrowth.

They had not been walking long when they encountered the woman. She appeared to be on her own, striding through the forest confidently, constantly looking around as if she were searching for something. She heard Tabitha and Amira approach, and turned to face them.

'Have you seen a man?' she asked. 'He would be weak and frightened and emaciated, bounding through the forest or leaping from tree to tree, with a wild look in his eyes.'

'You are the first person we've encountered,' said Amira.

The woman sighed.

'Sometimes I wonder why I persist in searching for him,' she said. 'I feel as if all I've ever done since we were married ten years ago is implore him to stay, to pull him back and attempt to restrain him, and then to go out into the wildness of the world to bring him home.'

She dropped down to sit beneath a gnarled, twisted oak tree, and reached into her cloak to produce a flask, and a parcel, which she unwrapped to reveal half a loaf of dark bread.

'My name is Eorann. Would you like to pause, and eat with me?' she asked.

Tabitha remembered all she'd learnt during her long years on the road, all the warnings about the dangers of accepting food from strangers, about being trapped in underworlds by pomegranate seeds, about waters of forgetfulness. But then she looked at Eorann, with her tired, worried face, and her meagre handful of food, and sank down beside her to share in her meal. Amira followed suit.

'Why are you searching for your husband in the forest?' asked Amira. 'It seems an isolated and uninhabited place.'

'He's here — at least I think he's here — although I tried to prevent him leaving twice. Once when he told me he was joining Congal Cáech in a pointless, futile battle at Mag Rath, and I implored him to stay, but he said he had sworn an oath and must honour his allegiance to Congal. I had warned him that allying with Congal was a terrible idea, and he had simply reeled off a list of his ancestors and Congal's, and the various ways they had been united through marriage or diplomatic alliance throughout the years, and the places in this part of the land that had been named for joint exploits of his and Congal's relatives in the distant past, as if that was an answer. And when he returned home from that battle, one of Congal's many scattered and defeated troops, shattered by what he had seen, it was as if the four walls of our fort couldn't contain him. His mind was as restless as his body, as if he had forgotten he was a king, with duties to protect and provide for the people living under his roof.'

She broke pieces from the loaf of bread, and handed them to Amira and Tabitha, who washed them down with the red wine from the flask. In a gentle voice, Amira interjected.

'You said you prevented him leaving twice. What happened the second time?'

Eorann resumed her narrative.

'He received word that a saint — a holy man — was on his lands, and rushed out to meet him, but in the confusion of his mind he had forgotten he had just come from bed, and was wearing only the cloak he'd thrown over his shoulders. I knew how this would look, and tried to hold him back, but only succeeded in grabbing onto his cloak. My husband — Suibne — evaded my grasp, and bounded out to meet the saint, oblivious to the fact that his nakedness would be construed as a grave insult. And, sure enough, the saint was outraged, and would not be placated by me, and cursed my husband to roam the land, naked as he was, as fearful, frenzied and restless as the birds in the air. I've been seeking him ever since.'

'How long have you been walking?' asked Tabitha, with a surreptitious glance at Eorann's shoes, which were at least made of sturdy soft leather.

'I've been out on the road for three months, the last two weeks of that time in this forest,' Eorann replied. 'Everywhere I go I find traces of him: footprints near the streams, broken branches, feathers he leaves behind — yes, his avian transformation extends even to his physical characteristics. I've been told by people who have encountered him that he is growing feathers.'

She took a sip of the wine to steady the note of outrage that had crept into her voice, and continued.

'The thing that I find hardest to tolerate is the poetry. Everywhere I go, I hear his poetry. It seems that the changes that have come upon him have also transformed him into an insightful and affecting poet, and he has been spouting poetry at everyone he's encountered on his path — mostly rhapsodic tributes to the harsh beauty of the natural world, interspersed with laments at what he's lost of his former life as a ruler. Sometimes it's hard to tell from the poems people quote back to me whether he regrets his transformation or not, because he seems to revel at his life here in the wilderness. It's hard not to feel bitter at that, although of course I am hearing all these poems secondhand, from people who crossed Suibne's path briefly, or may not have even met him at all. But still, it hurts: every sensible decision I made, every piece of wise counsel, every small concession, every hint given slantwise and indirectly because I could not be seen to advise openly or make tactical alliances, all of it thrown away for a harsh, hard life spent roaming forests and living among the treetops with the birds. They say he sits at the feet of saints and sorcerers, and that they record his poetry for the great supernatural and spiritual insights it offers! Sometimes I feel like I will wear my shoes out with walking, bound to the earth by practicalities and slowness, while he springs from tree to tree, rushing along every path in unfettered freedom.'

'Were you happy, back in your fort?' asked Amira. The trio had finished their small meal, and, without noticing, had resumed their journey through the forest.

'Sometimes, in the small moments when I was given opportunities to build, and connect, and advise. I liked stretching my mind, and solving problems, and seeing connections and the consequences of actions. I didn't need to be recognised for it: the reward was in the connection well-made, the alliance well-forged, and the conflicts avoided. It didn't need to be on a grand scale. But unless I can bring Suibne home, it is impossible.'

'What would happen?' asked Tabitha, 'if you stopped chasing after him? What would happen if you stopped walking?'

Eorann paused, and looked along the tangled path ahead.

'I only ask,' said Tabitha, 'because sometimes, when you make the choice to stop walking, you find yourself on your own path at last, in your own story instead of someone else's.'

She took Amira's hand, joy in her face in spite of the sadness of the story they'd just been told, surer than ever in the rightness of decisions made so long ago on a hill of glass.

'And once you make that decision,' said Amira, 'you find that your path — indeed your _story_ — crosses and interweaves with the paths of other people. It's a kind of freedom.'

'I think ... I think you are right,' said Eorann in a soft voice. 'I've been running after Suibne so long, so tangled in his poems and the stories people tell me about him that I've almost lost myself. But I don't want to go back to my former home, and I don't want to stay in this forest — I want to see what's on the other side of it. Will you walk with me that far?'

Amira and Tabitha nodded their assent, and followed Eorann between the trees in the dwindling afternoon light.

*

They emerged several hours later into a sea of green grass: broad plains set among gently rolling hills. The land was deserted, and the faint heat of the sunlight lingered, though it was now twilight. All three women spotted it at once: a house, set high on a headland against the horizon. Behind it the sun sank into the sea in a blaze of orange, peach and fiery crimson. All three women felt the same pull, drawing them towards the house like a gold thread of hope and home. As they approached the house they saw it was surrounded by fruit trees: apples and plums and pears and peaches, as well as extensive vegetable and herb gardens, slightly overgrown with weeds. Gooseberry and sloe plants grew along the walls of the house, and a large hazel tree spread its branches over one corner of the garden, heavy with hazelnuts.

Eorann strode boldly up to the door of the house, and pushed it open. It was unlocked, and the house was empty. It looked lived in, but deserted: there was furniture, all covered with warm, woollen blankets, and when they investigated the kitchen they discovered heavy iron pots, earthenware plates and bowls, cutlery, and a pantry stocked with dried herbs, twisted strands of garlic, grain, nuts and spices. But although they hunted all through the house (discovering a loom and spindles, equipment for making cheese, butter and beer, and a small collection of exquisitely decorated books in the process), they could find no inhabitants, or any indication that its previous residents were likely to return. And so at last they settled in for the night. Tabitha found kindling and firewood, and lit a fire in the cold, empty central fireplace, while Eorann hunted for sources of water, exclaiming in triumph when she discovered a well behind the house. Amira brought blankets and other bedding up to the bedrooms, piling the beds high with woollen warmth against the evening chill. It was too dark to investigate the garden properly, so the three women ate a simple meal of nuts, apples and the last of the bread from Eorann's pack, before drifting away to sleep.

Amira and Tabitha lay side by side in the bed they had chosen. The wool blankets were scratchy, but warm, and the bed smelled faintly of herbs and heather. They looked at each other, their eyes silver in the moonlight.

'I think we've found it,' said Amira. 'We've found our way back onto our own path, after some detours.'

'You're right,' said Tabitha. 'This is the place where we stop walking. At least for a little while.'

And they reached out for one another, curling together in exhaustion and relief and love, slipping into sleep, surrounded by the soft sigh of the sea.

*

The first few months in the house were hard. It was fortunate that they had arrived there in early autumn, as this meant they could rely on the fruit trees as a source of food while they foraged and explored and built up stores for the winter. Eorann was inventive and resourceful: she taught herself to fish in the bay below, and harvested kelp that washed up on the shore, along with shellfish and crabs. She walked for hours and returned triumphant after meeting distant neighbours and securing agreements to trade dried fruit and fish for grain, salt and candles, and knowledge of when the traders came through the area. That first winter, they gave away the last of Amira's jewellery to pay for a cow, and a flock of chickens, and built up the garden to keep them safe from the cold weather. Eorann made plans to build hives and keep bees, but these would have to wait until the seasons had turned and they had more things to trade. And slowly, carefully, one handful of carefully hoarded grain at a time, they built their new home together. And after the seasons turned and the winter frost thawed, they found that theirs were not the only paths that led to the little house on the headland.

They came from everywhere, without any seeming pattern, drawn by hope, or curiosity, or sheer determination. Some would spill their stories in a torrent of words: girls who wandered off the forest path, and were blamed for everything that followed, women who were cursed with silence and forced to carry travellers on their backs in atonement for some imagined sin, sisters who measured out their lives in hours, staving off dawn and death with yet another unfinished story. Others were silent at first, but let their bodies do the talking: a woman who shifted constantly between her human form and a tangled mass of flowers, women clutching sealskins or trailing swan-wings, their eyes heavy with past betrayals. One woman wept for joy at her sheer relief at being believed, after a lifetime in which her every prophecy had been met with disbelief and horrifying consequences. Sometimes the women would share the stories that had been told about them, pointing out the errors and inconsistencies, inserting their own voices into the narratives that had grown up around them without their input. Some stayed for a few days before moving on, restless for the road, while others became permanent inhabitants of the house, which seemed to expand, growing extra rooms to accommodate any new residents.

Eorann was in her element: her talents for logistics and planning were constantly required, and she treated every successful trade, every bargain, every barter with the sea-voyagers she had persuaded to make annual stops at the bay below the house with the same seriousness she had previously treated diplomatic alliances and political struggles. Tabitha and Amira were content to leave such things to Eorann, preferring instead to tend the bees and the garden, or sit inside with the other women who joined their household, exchanging stories, weaving on the loom, or reading from the house's growing collection of books.

And one day, a familiar pair walked through the door: Fúamnach and Étaín, who had found each other again at last, and finally managed to walk the paths of their own story. Amira's brooch gleamed on Fúamnach's cloak. Amira and Tabitha embraced them with exclamations of joy, and welcomed them into their home with honey cakes and hot, spiced mead. In Fúamnach and Étaín's eyes they could see the same love and trust and hope that they had first found on a faraway glass hill all those years ago, and it warmed their hearts. They showed the newcomers around the house, introducing them to all the other inhabitants, helping them unload their packs and settle into the new room which seemed to have winked into existence upon their arrival. And after they had left Fúamnach and Étaín unpacking, Tabitha and Amira drifted outside to stand among the flowering trees of their garden.

The sun was high in the sky, and the sea below glittered and shimmered in its light. The smell of hazel, apple, and peach blossom was heavy in the air, mingling with the faint scent of honey from the hives. Small fishing vessels crisscrossed the water, and a larger trading ship hovered just below the horizon. There were many paths to that house on the headland, across land and sea, across space and time. Its door would always be open. And it would always be there for anyone who needed to find it, their journeys and stories tangling and interweaving, like threads of gold, woven and connected and calling them home. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic alludes to many fairytales, folk tales, myths, and legends, but it draws most heavily on two medieval Irish tales. You can read it without knowledge of those tales, but if you would like to know more about them, I have provided links that will help. Fúamnach and Étaín are characters from _Tochmarc Étaíne_ ('The Wooing of Étaín), which is summarised [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tochmarc_%C3%89ta%C3%ADne) on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia entry also provides details of editions and translations. Eorann is a character in _Buile Shuibne_ ('The Frenzy of Suibne'), which is summarised [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buile_Shuibhne) on Wikipedia, along with details of editions and translations. You will find if you read the original tales that I've taken some liberties with them, as well as altering their timelines slightly to fit with that of the fic and the kind of shifting, fluid, fairytale time within which it exists.


End file.
